Team Swamp

We're so dead...

Bruunor Coalbeard

Description:

Bio:

In my 77th year of apprenticeship under Yar, I heard of the blessing that Moradin had bestowed upon my clan. Yar had been telling the tale of when he had been an apprentice to Darig, which according to Yar could feed ten thousand Dwarves in a single day as well as cleave a goblin’s head in two from one hundred paces with a single throw of an axe. I had heard hundreds of stories from Yar over the years, and as always I listened with ever-growing pride in my people and their accomplishments. The story was cut short when Fetad came with the news of our blessing. The first Moon Twins of the Coalbeard Clan; a blessing that would be met with feasts that rivaled that of when Gloren returned to Proudhammer with the blood of the Cave-in on his throwing axe. Yar looked at me with eyes that could no longer see far, and with a hand that could no longer grip an axe he handed me the spoon that I would one day give to my own apprentice. I was to head this feast-to-come, and a full three years earlier than my time as apprentice should allow. That night was the first time since receiving my apprenticeship that I bowed in prayer to Moradin. I thanked him for the gift of the Moon Twins he had bestowed upon my clan, I thanked him for giving me the gift that gave Yar the confidence in me to end my apprenticeship, I thanked him for the huge deposit of ore that would bring me thousands of hungry Dwarves to feed, and I promised to him that I would do everything I could to earn my place in his halls.

I awoke to the sound of a thousand war cries, and the rumble of tens of thousands of footfalls. My first thought was of the Moon Twins, of their protection. I ran to the door with glory in my head and nothing in my hand. Just thirty paces from my door sat my armor and my axe. Thirty paces and I would put an end to whatever would dare enter the halls of the Coalbeard Clan. It was with my axe firmly in my sight that I did fall in battle.

But I did not fall. The Cave-in did not take me.

The first thing I saw when I awoke was my own blood upon the large bludgeoning rock beside me. Realizing that I was not in the halls of Moradin, but in the familiar halls of Coalbeard, I leapt to my feet and started to run to my axe, glory once again taking the place of all other thoughts. The silence that filled my head overwhelmed the pain and the thoughts of glory. The silence stopped my feet from creating the only echoes in the once deafening hall of my grandfathers. There were no longer battle cries, no longer the sound of metal hitting ore, not even the sound of drunken Dwarves bellowing their boastful challenges to each other. There were only the sounds of rats chewing on flesh and bellowing their own boastful challenges to any other rats that dare take away their prized feast. Their feast consisted of my brothers, my friends, and my family.

The selfish thought of having my friends and family taken away from me, and the even more selfish thought of losing the opportunity to head a glorious feast as the head cook of the Coalbeard Clan was soon mangled by the thought that has yet to leave my head to this day. The Moon Twins.

Two days of walking the halls of my once proud clan to gather the dead and search for the Moon Twins won me only the chance to see that the bodies of my clan would be closer to Moradin, and the bodies of the goblins that were lucky to be dead and not see my fury thoroughly defiled.

I had no plan, I had no information, and I had no direction other than up. I had only gone to the surface when Yar wanted to show me where some of the ingredients that we were using had originated. I was told that any Dwarves I would meet on the surface would be crazy. I had been told of how the humans bowed to the whims of fickle Gods, and even more fickle politics.

The sun is hot and blinding. The ingredients I use are almost non-existent on the surface. I’ve only been through one hundred years of training for battle, and none of it in the wide-open spaces that I now must traverse. I have only heard stories of the magics that are used by man and beast. I have no direction to go and no way to tell which direction I am going. I have at least an entire clan of goblins to kill, my own clan to avenge, an entire world to search, and a promise to Moradin to keep. For the first time in my life and perhaps from this point forward, I am alone.